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      in World Politics

      Will Biden Overturn Sanctions on the ICC?

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      From the get-go, US President Joe Biden’s administration has focused on reversing the worst of Donald Trump’s policy decisions. One of the very worst was the imposition of sanctions on individual officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump administration was so enamored of sanctions as a weapon of mass intimidation that it extended the policy beyond the traditional response to hostile governments to target individuals who failed to show the US sufficient respect.

      This was a logical consequence of Trump’s vaunted “America First” policy. This translates as national interest first, international law last. In September 2020, Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, singled out ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for sanctions. He “announced a freeze on assets held in the US or subject to US law by Bensouda and the court’s head of jurisdiction, Phakiso Mochochoko.” Even Rodrigo Duterte, the thuggish Filipino president who unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from membership in the Rome Treaty after the ICC received a complaint of crimes against humanity resulting from his brutal and chaotic war on drugs, never imagined imposing sanctions on the chief prosecutor.

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      In other words, Trump’s initiative can only be considered extreme. Bensouda, whose job consists of carrying out investigations related to procedures of justice, complained of “unprecedented and wholly unacceptable threats, attacks and sanctions.” Appearing to sympathize, the Biden administration issued this statement: “Much as we disagree with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Israeli/Palestinian situations, the sanctions will be thoroughly reviewed as we determine our next steps.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Thoroughly review:

      Examine an abusive practice with the hope of finding a devious way to justify its continuation

      Contextual Note

      The word “review” literally means “to look at again.” When politicians use the term, they imply that they will take a more critical look at the issue under consideration with a view to engaging remedial action. This is especially significant at moments in history where one party or political personality has been replaced by another with a highly contrasted worldview. Biden has already taken steps to return to the essential international treaties Trump so casually abandoned, as well as undo the former president’s complicity with the murderous Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The Biden administration needs to show that it is free not just to review but to thoroughly overturn dangerous and sometimes criminal policies.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In reality, the promise to “thoroughly review” often serves a more devious purpose. It creates an expectation that whatever policy emerges — even if it is identical with that of the past — will be legitimized. Rather than remedy a mistake, it may stand as a ploy to seek a better argument in favor of perpetuating the effects of the mistake. Former President Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of ending the war in Iraq. After thoroughly reviewing it with the help of the Pentagon, he continued it.

      The question of the ICC is no ordinary political issue. It contains within it the very idea of justice and fairness that Americans like to see as the core of their “exceptional” ideology, a system of values that never tires of proclaiming its allegiance to the idea of “liberty and justice for all.” On that basis, it should be easy for the Biden administration to cancel Trump’s sanctions and apologize for his arrogance. In terms of PR, it provides a perfect pretext for a new president to demonstrate a willingness to correct the injustices of the past.

      But as with so many issues Biden has inherited from Trump, there is a hidden risk and potentially a serious embarrassment. By provoking the ICC, Trump shouted from the rooftops what previous presidents accomplished by whispering in private amongst themselves. The US has never demonstrated the intention of respecting the principles it so assiduously promoted when the victorious Allies launched the Nuremberg trials. The message those trials sent was that every nation on earth must answer the accusation of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The refusal to be judged by the legal criteria it uses to judge others may provide the best definition of the meaning of “American exceptionalism.”

      Because the nation that invented democracy “believes” with all its soul in everything that is good and just, it can never be held to account for being bad and unjust. At best, American individuals are sometimes guilty of a lapse of judgment, but the American nation as a whole is, as the song says, “a soul whose intentions are good.” Since “no one alive can always be an angel,” the nation feels justified pleading to the heavens, “Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” 

      If Biden follows through and repeals Trump’s sanctions, the consequences could be serious. It would implicitly allow the ICC to pursue the complaints against both the US in Afghanistan and Israel with regard to Palestinians within its borders. Those were the two causes that prompted Pompeo to impose sanctions, citing the principle of national sovereignty. 

      That the US should defend Israel’s putative sovereignty — especially if it means shielding that nation from being prosecuted for war crimes — makes no serious legal sense. But it does reveal a basic truth about US foreign policy. If anything, the immunity the US claims for Israel can be compared with the principle in US law of someone who pleads the fifth amendment in a courtroom to avoid incriminating their spouse (“the spousal testimonial privilege”). Do both Trump and Biden consider the US and Israel a married couple?

      How far is Biden willing to go to undo Trump’s devilry? How much can he backtrack without exposing the US to the principle of universal justice? This is a serious quandary for a president who repeats in nearly every one of his speeches that the US must “not lead by the example of its power, but by the power of its example.”

      Historical Note

      Another issue has just emerged in the news cycle that also requires a thorough review. It concerns the production of semiconductors. The Verge offers this headline: “Biden signs executive order calling for semiconductor supply chain review.” American industry is facing a penury of chips, the essential component of nearly everything Americans buy these days (apart from fast food). From PCs and smartphones to cars, watches and refrigerators, chips rule the consumer economy. Will this be as “thoroughly reviewed” as the reconsideration of the ICC sanctions? It should be because it concerns a problem that affects the entire economy.

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      Not so long ago in recent history, the US was the world’s major manufacturer of semi-conductors. But because it became cheaper to outsource production to Asian nations, US manufacturers preferred to move their supply chain across the Pacific Ocean. Asia has since achieved a quasi-monopoly on semiconductor production.

      The Associated Press recently reported on the “widening global shortage of semiconductors for auto parts” that has forced “major auto companies to halt or slow vehicle production just as they were recovering from pandemic-related factory shutdowns.” The penury of semi-conductors could send an economy already battered by the pandemic into a tailspin. 

      This would be especially true if the Asian countries that produce more than 80% of the world’s and America’s supply were unable or unwilling to deliver. The entire question has evolved into something even more dire. Business Insider summarizes the dilemma in a headline: “The global chip shortage is hurting businesses and could be a national security issue.”

      It is not hard to imagine a war, even a limited war, breaking out between the US and China over navigation in the contested South China Sea or Chinese threats against Taiwan. In such an event, the US could potentially be starved of the supply of essential components required both for its military capacity and its consumer economy. The Biden administration must be aware of this and ready to review it. But once the review is completed, what can they do to remedy it? Not much, at least in the time frame that would be required to lead a military campaign.

      Rather than challenge China and risk alienating nearly all of Asia, the Biden administration can only hope to solve the problem of penury through cooperation and the recognition of interdependence, in contrast with the attitude of confrontation nurtured by Donald Trump. The Biden administration may be forced to engage a particularly “thorough review” on this issue.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Biden Should Rejoin the Iran Deal Before It’s Too Late

      by

      As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on the new US president and his foreign policy after successive administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system.

      Cautious optimism toward President Joe Biden is very much based on his commitment to Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement in 2015: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement with Iran. Biden, along with his fellow Democrats, excoriated then-President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 and promised to promptly rejoin the deal if elected. But Biden now appears to be hedging his position in a way that risks turning what should be an easy win for the new administration into an avoidable and tragic diplomatic failure.

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      While it was the United States under Trump that withdrew from the nuclear agreement, Biden is taking the position that the US will not rejoin the agreement or drop its unilateral sanctions until Iran first comes back into compliance with the terms of the JCPOA. After withdrawing from the agreement, the US is in no position to make such demands, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has clearly and eloquently rejected them, reiterating Iran’s firm commitment that it will return to full compliance as soon as the US does so.

      Biden should have announced US reentry as one of his first executive orders. It did not require renegotiation or debate. On the campaign trail, Senator Bernie Sanders, Biden’s main competitor for the Democratic nomination, simply promised, “I would re-enter the agreement on day one of my presidency.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      It wasn’t just Sanders. Then-candidate Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said during the Democratic primary, “We need to rejoin our allies in returning to the agreement, provided Iran agrees to comply with the agreement and take steps to reverse its breaches.” Gillibrand said that Iran must “agree” to take those steps, not that it must take them first, presciently anticipating — and implicitly rejecting — Biden’s self-defeating position that Iran must fully return to compliance with the JCPOA before the US will rejoin.

      If Biden just rejoins the JCPOA, all of the provisions of the agreement will be back in force and work exactly as they did before Trump opted out. Iran will be subject to the same International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections and reports as before. Whether Iran is in compliance or not will be determined by the IAEA, not unilaterally by the United States. That is how the agreement works, as all the signatories agreed: China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union — and the United States.

      Neocons and Hawks

      So, why is Biden not eagerly pocketing this easy first win for his stated commitment to diplomacy? A December 2020 letter supporting the JCPOA, signed by 150 House Democrats, should have reassured Biden that he has overwhelming support to stand up to hawks in both parties. But instead, he seems to be listening to opponents of the Iran deal telling him that Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement has given him “leverage” to negotiate new concessions from Iran before rejoining. Rather than giving Biden leverage over Iran, which has no reason to make further concessions, this has given opponents of the JCPOA leverage over Biden.

      American neocons and hawks, including those inside his own administration, appear to be flexing their muscles to kill Biden’s commitment to diplomacy at birth, and his own hawkish foreign policy views make him dangerously susceptible to their arguments. This is also a test of his previously deferential relationship with Israel, whose government vehemently opposes the JCPOA and whose officials have even threatened to launch a military attack on Iran if the US rejoins it, a flagrantly illegal threat that Biden has yet to publicly condemn.

      In a more rational world, the call for nuclear disarmament in the Middle East would focus on Israel, not Iran. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently wrote in The Guardian, Israel’s own possession of dozens — or maybe hundreds — of nuclear weapons is the worst kept secret in the world. Tutu’s article was an open letter to Biden, asking him to publicly acknowledge what the whole world already knows and to respond as required under US law to the actual proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

      Instead of tackling the danger of Israel’s real nuclear weapons, successive US administrations have chosen to “cry wolf” over non-existent nuclear weapons in Iraq and Iran to justify besieging their governments, imposing deadly sanctions on their people, invading Iraq and threatening Iran. A skeptical world is watching to see whether President Biden has the integrity and political will to break this insidious pattern.

      The CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), which stokes Americans’ fears of imaginary Iranian nuclear weapons and feeds endless allegations about them to the IAEA, is the same entity that produced the lies that drove America to war on Iraq in 2003. In December 2002, WINPAC’s director, Alan Foley, told his staff, “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so” — even as he privately admitted to his retired CIA colleague Melvin Goodman that US forces searching for WMDs in Iraq would find “not much, if anything.”

      What makes Biden’s stalling to appease Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the neocons diplomatically suicidal at this moment in time is that in November 2020, the Iranian parliament passed a law that forces its government to halt nuclear inspections and boost uranium enrichment if US sanctions are not eased by February 21.

      It’s Getting Complicated

      To complicate matters further, Iran is holding its own presidential election on June 18, and election season — when this issue will be hotly debated — begins after the Iranian New Year on March 21. The winner is expected to be a hawkish hardliner. Trump’s failed policy, which Biden is now continuing by default, has discredited the diplomatic efforts of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, confirming for many Iranians that negotiating with America is a fool’s errand.

      If Biden does not rejoin the JCPOA soon, time will be too short to restore full compliance by both Iran and the US — including lifting relevant sanctions — before Iran’s election. Each day that goes by reduces the time available for Iranians to see benefits from the removal of sanctions, leaving little chance that they will vote for a new government that supports diplomacy with the United States. The timetable around the JCPOA was known and predictable, so this avoidable crisis seems to be the result of a deliberate decision by Biden to try to appease neocons and warmongers — domestic and foreign — by bullying Iran, a partner in an international agreement he claims to support, to make additional concessions that are not part of the agreement.

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      During his election campaign, candidate Biden promised to “elevate diplomacy as the premier tool of our global engagement.” If President Biden fails this first test of his promised diplomacy, people around the world will conclude that, despite his trademark smile and affable personality, he represents no more of a genuine recommitment to American partnership in a cooperative “rules-based world” than Trump or Obama did.

      That will confirm the steadily growing international perception that, behind the Republicans’ and Democrats’ good cop-bad cop routine, the overall direction of US foreign policy remains fundamentally aggressive, coercive and destructive. People and governments around the world will continue to downgrade relations with the United States, as they did under Trump, and even traditional US allies will chart an increasingly independent course in a multipolar world where the US is no longer a reliable partner and certainly not a leader.

      So much is hanging in the balance, for the everyday people of Iran suffering and dying under the impact of US sanctions, for Americans yearning for more peaceful relations with our neighbors around the world, and for people everywhere who long for a more humane and equitable international order to confront the massive problems facing us all in this century. Can Biden’s America be part of the solution? After just weeks in office, surely it can’t be too late. But the ball is in his court, and the whole world is watching.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Equality Act: US House passes sweeping LGBTQ+ rights bill

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      The House has passed the landmark Equality Act, taking LGBTQ+ Americans one step closer to winning legal protection from discrimination.The Equality Act amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in addition to race, religion, sex and national origin.The key civil rights bill passed in a vote of 224 to 216, with three Republicans breaking with their party to joining all Democrats in supporting the legislation. But the bill faces an uncertain future in the evenly divided Senate, where Democrats will need 60 votes to break a filibuster on the legislation.“Without the Equality Act, this nation will never live up to its principles of freedom and equality,” Democratic representative Marie Newman of Illinois, who has a trans daughter, said on the House floor on Wednesday.“I’m voting yes on the Equality Act for Evie Newman, my daughter and the strongest, bravest person I know.”Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people often encounter prejudice in housing, credit, jury service and public spaces, as only 22 states and the District of Columbia prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.State legislatures regularly advance laws that limit local LGBTQ+ protections. Since the start of the year, a dozen states have introduced or passed laws to bar trans girls from participating in girls’ sports leagues.President Joe Biden has already said he would sign the Equality Act if it can make it through the Senate. “Every person should be treated with dignity and respect, and this bill represents a critical step toward ensuring that America lives up to our foundational values of equality and freedom for all,” Biden said in a statement last week.Several Senate Republicans have expressed their opposition, including Mitt Romney of Utah, a former presidential candidate, who said he would oppose the bill unless it added a provision giving “strong religious liberty protections”.However, LGBTQ+ advocates say they are confident the bill will become law because of its popularity among the American public.An estimated 83% of Americans favor laws that would protect LGBTQ+ people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodation and housing, including 68% of Republicans, according to a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute.“In a period of such polarization, where else do you have over 80% of support for a piece of legislation?” said Janson Wu, executive director of advocacy group Glaad. “This should be a ‘no-brainer’ for any legislator regardless of their party.”The House first passed the Equality Act in 2019, but it stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate during the Trump administration, which opposed the bill. The Democrats won control of the Senate in November’s elections.Biden is a vocal supporter of LGBT+ rights, in a clear departure from the Trump administration, which barred trans people from joining the military and issued orders emphasizing the importance of “biological sex” rather than gender identity.Since taking office in January, Biden signed an executive order that federal agencies must not discriminate against LGBT+ people and issued a memorandum aimed at protecting LGBT+ rights worldwide, including potentially through the use of sanctions.LGBTQ+ advocates praised Biden’s use of the executive office but reiterated the need for comprehensive legislation.“We deserve more than temporary measures,” said Erin Uritus, chief executive of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, in a statement.“Turning the Equality Act into the law of the land is absolutely necessary to cement civil rights protections for LGBTQ Americans.”Reuters contributed to this report More

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      in US Politics

      Trans doctor Rachel Levine faces historic Senate confirmation hearing

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      Dr Rachel Levine, a pediatrician and health official from Pennsylvania, faced a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday as Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant health secretary. The process could see her become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the US Senate.If confirmed, Levine, 63, would make history and break several glass ceilings. In a country which still only has a handful of openly trans public officials, she would be the most high-profile, occupying a senior position in the Biden administration with major responsibilities in the pandemic response.Announcing her nomination last month, Biden said Levine would bring “steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get through this pandemic … She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”As the confirmation hearing got under way on Thursday Levine faced hostile questioning from some of the Republican members of the Senate. Rand Paul, senator from Kentucky, compared transgender surgery misleadingly to genital mutilation and accused Levine of supporting “surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia”.Levine replied by saying that transgender medicine was very complex. “If I am fortunate enough to be confirmed, I will look forward to working with you and your office on the standards of care” in this field, she said.Paul was rebuked by the chair of the committee, Patty Murray, for his “harmful misrepresentations”.Levine is practiced in the art of negotiating confirmation hearings. She had to be confirmed by the Pennsylvania senate in 2015 for her first public role as physician general of the state.The following year she told the Washington Post that she succeeded in securing a unanimous confirmation vote after she sat down one-on-one with the state senators. “With very few exceptions my being transgender is not an issue,” she told the newspaper.Since the start of the pandemic she has led Pennsylvania’s effort to combat the health crisis as the state’s health secretary. In such a highly visible role she has been confronted by a rash of hostile and anti-trans mockery and abuse on social media and even at a public fair.Last July the governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, who brought Levine into public office, felt it necessary to put out a statement defending her against what he called “vile acts” and “relentless comments and slurs”. He said she was a “highly skilled, valued and capable member of my administration and transgender”.Biden’s nomination of Levine is one of several moves taken by the new administration to promote LGBTQ+ rights. Last month the president lifted Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the US military.Earlier this month Pete Buttigieg became the first openly gay person to be confirmed to a cabinet post as transportation secretary. More

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      in US Politics

      Fight to vote: the woman who was key in 'getting us the Voting Rights Act'

      by

      [embedded content]
      Happy Thursday,
      During the final week of Black History Month, I wanted to continue to look at the people who helped shape the Voting Rights Act, the powerful 1965 law that offered unprecedented protection for voting rights in America. As the country faces another surge of efforts to make it harder to vote, it’s a reminder of how hard Black Americans had to fight to gain and protect the rights to vote that are in place now.
      Last week, I wrote about Bloody Sunday, the March 1965 protest that led directly to the Voting Rights Act. The heroes of that march – people like John Lewis, Hosea Williams and Martin Luther King Jr – have become lions of American history. But until recently, one of the most overlooked people in the march was Amelia Boynton (later Amelia Boynton Robinson), who had been organizing in Selma for years before Bloody Sunday and was the one who called in King to bring national attention to the voter suppression in the now historic city.
      “She got us the Voting Rights Act,” said Carol Anderson, a historian at Emory University.
      “It’s one of the ‘failings’, and I’ll put that in quotes, of the writings of the civil rights movement, is that women who are key in organizing are written out,” she added. “The grassroots work of Mrs Boynton just didn’t get the kind of respect and honor that it deserved.”
      By the time Lewis, King and others arrived in Selma, Boynton was already one of the most well-known and respected people in its Black community. She came to the city in 1929 when she got a job with the US Department of Agriculture, traveling around the state to show African Americans how to improve their farming, but also talking to them about voting. She and her then husband, Samuel Boynton, held meetings in homes and churches, showing people how to register to vote as they faced literacy tests and poll taxes, Jim Crow era obstacles that prevented Black people from registering to vote. More

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      in World Politics

      Fascism and Peace: Incompatible or Inseparable?

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      For Benito Mussolini, life was an eternal struggle. Shaped by a social Darwinist worldview and following Georges Sorel’s philosophy of the virtue of violence, Il Duce (the leader), as Mussolini was known, regarded war as men’s essential purpose in life. It was through war that he intended to revolutionize Italian society and politics, destroy Italian vices like corruption, regionalism and individualism, and create the “new man” — a masculine, athletic peasant-soldier. Il Duce was convinced that “the character of the Italians must be forged in combat.”

      However, in January 1940, he confessed to his son-in-law and then-foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, that so far he had failed in this task: “Have you ever seen a lamb become a wolf? The Italian people is a race of sheep. Eighteen years is not enough to change them. It takes a hundred and eighty years or maybe a hundred and eighty centuries.”

      The New Man in Fascism Past and Present

      READ MORE

      However, it is not only Mussolini’s militaristic and violent rhetoric that put violence, war and struggle at the core of fascism. Il Duce and the fascist regime also followed up with violent action. Whether it was the bloody clashes between the fascist blackshirts and the Socialists in the 1920s, the brutal oppression of native rebellions in Libya in the 1920s and 1930s, the war crimes in Ethiopia or the atrocities committed during the Second World War, violence and war were fundamentally linked to the history of fascism. It is then not surprising that scholars who have attempted to define fascism emphasize the violent characteristics in an effort to capture the essence of the only “genuine ideology” of the 20th century, as Mussolini proudly called it in 1932.

      A Mutilated Victory

      Thus, the question arises: Where does “peace” fit in? Or was “peace” totally alien to fascist thinking and ideology? According to Johan Galtung, the founder of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, we can distinguish between a “positive” and a “negative peace.” Whereas the former refers to a constructive resolution of conflict and the creation of a social and political system that serves the needs of everybody, the latter refers to the absence of violence. How did fascists perceive a positive peace as promoted by Western democracies and new institutions such as the League of Nations after World War I? Did fascists’ long-term plans entail references to peace — at least in the sense of Galtung’s negative peace?

      Thomas Nipperdey began his history on 19th century Germany with the now famous words: “At the beginning was Napoleon.” When analyzing Italian fascism’s relationship to peace, one could make a similar statement: At the beginning was World War I. A majority of fascists, including Mussolini, Dino Grandi and Achille Starace, were staunch interventionists who were totally disappointed and appalled by the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference. They regarded the treaties as a betrayal to their own war commitment and perceived them as unjust terms that were forced onto Italy by Great Britain and France. When referring to these agreements, they commonly used the words “mutilated victory,” a slogan coined by Italian nationalist and poet Gabriele D’Annunzio.

      Embed from Getty Images

      When assessing the slogan’s devastating consequences for Italy’s political scene, it can only be compared with the infamous German Dolchstosslegende — the stab-in-the-back myth used by the German far right (including the National Socialists) against the Weimar Republic. On the one hand, Italian fascists used the mutilated victory myth against Italian liberals, whom they blamed for a failed negotiation strategy in Paris and consequently labeled traitors to the Italian nation. On the other hand, it was used to attack Western democracies accused of trying to stop Italy from taking its rightful place on the international stage.

      Interestingly, the phrase itself exposes the fascists’ preference for martial rhetoric. Instead of using the term “peace treaties,” the slogan “mutilated victory” implies an ongoing struggle as well as powerfully evoking those who returned from the war wounded. These soldiers who sacrificed themselves for the greater good of their fatherland had been shamefully betrayed by both Western democracies and liberal Italian politicians. Therefore, it is not surprising that one of the main goals of Italian fascism was to seek a revision of the postwar peace order and thus turn a “mutilated victory” into a “true victory” for Italy.

      The Rejection of Peace

      The fascists’ attitude toward the Paris Peace Treaties is just one example that illustrates their overall stance toward the peaceful order democracies sought to create following World War I. In 1932, when the regime in Rome celebrated its 10-year anniversary, the government published the “Doctrine of Fascism,” written mainly by Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile. It contained one of the rare references to peace in an official government document, stating: “Fascism does not … believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace. It therefore discards pacifism as a cloak for cowardly supine renunciation in contradistinction to self-sacrifice. … War alone keys up all human energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those peoples who have the courage to face it.”  

      This rejection of peace was not solely confined to the international arena; it also applied to domestic politics. The government attempted to infuse this anti-pacifistic attitude, which became a guiding doctrine for the fascists’ social and political agenda, into the every-day life of its citizens. The Italian new man was meant to embrace a fighting spirit, accept all kinds of risks and should not shy away from self-sacrifice. This concept of life mirrored the philosophy of Futurists such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who intended, as he outlined in his “Futurist Manifesto” of 1919, “to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness” and embraced “courage, audacity and revolt.”

      This concept of life stood in contrast to the bourgeois lifestyle, which the fascists rejected as individualistic, feminine and weak. A bourgeois society, according to fascist doctrine, was only able to survive if it created what fascism despised the most: long-lasting peace. For Mussolini, the embodiment of such a society was Great Britain. He explained to Ciano that he had “studied the different generations of the English people. He observed that 22 million men faced 24 million women and that 12 million citizens were over 50 years old and thus have crossed the line of belligerent desires. Consequently, the static masses dominated the youthful-dynamic ones. That means: quiet life, ready for compromises, peace.” Compromise and peace, however, were, in the fascist worldview, obvious signs of weakness, cowardice and decay.

      This quote leads to a final point. Whether in domestic affairs or in international politics, fascists rejected any kind of status quo. They defined their movement as dynamic, led by a charismatic leader who was energetic and powerful and always moving forward. Mussolini himself, portrayed as the nation’s soldier number one and a reincarnation of the condottiere — a leader of mercenaries in Renaissance Italy — claimed that he was born to never let the Italian people rest. A positive peace, however, would maintain and safeguard a certain status quo and thus undermine the fascists’ constructed self-image of a dynamic movement. Robert Paxton argues that a fascist movement must constantly renew itself and challenge the status quo. If it fails to do so, it turns into a normal form of dictatorship. Thus, one could conclude that if a fascist regime accepts a positive peace, it has ceased to exist.

      Is peace, therefore, just another area where we could define fascism as an essential anti-movement? Such a conclusion, however, would be too simple. Historian Roger Griffin convincingly argued that it would be misleading to understand fascism purely as an anti-movement. On the contrary, fascists seduced the masses by promoting the idea of the rebirth of the nation, coined by Griffin as a form of palingenetic ultra-nationalism. Fascists were not nihilists by nature but wanted to create a brighter, better future for the nation by leading it out of whatever crisis it currently faced, which, in turn, means manufacturing a crisis if none can be found.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      ‘The base is solidly behind him’: Trumpism expected to thrive at CPAC

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      Ronald Solomon spent five days making the 2,300-mile drive from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Orlando, Florida, where he will sell about 75 different hat designs, 15 types of flag, 10 T-shirt designs and a range of eight face masks.Solomon is the president of the Maga Mall, a retailer of Donald Trump and “Make America great again” merchandise. Undeterred by the former president’s 2020 election defeat and disgrace, he expects to do brisk business when the biggest annual gathering of grassroots conservatives opens on Thursday.“I speak to state and county Republican party leaders all over the United States and the base is solidly behind Trump,” the 61-year-old said by phone while driving through Louisiana. “As a matter of fact, there’s a movement afoot to get rid of what people call a Rino – a Republican in name only.”Solomon, whose range of masks includes “God, guns and Trump” and “Trump 2024”, will set up his booth at the four-day Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando. The event has always been an effective way of taking the pulse of the Republican party and broader conservative movement.In 2016 Trump, who was assailing the Republican establishment in a nasty US presidential primary campaign, cancelled a planned appearance amid fears of boos and protests. But a year later, having vanquished Hillary Clinton, he was greeted as a conquering hero. CPAC became an annual Maga jamboree, less conservative policy shop than Trumpian cult of personality in action.The lineup at CPAC 2021 – switched to Florida from Maryland because of coronavirus safety constraints – suggest that Trump’s dominance is entirely undiminished by his loss of the White House and Republican setbacks in Congress.Speakers include his allies such as Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state; Ben Carson, the ex-housing secretary; Sarah Sanders, a former White House press secretary; Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota; Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host; Jon Voight, an ardently pro-Trump actor; and Donald Trump Jr, the 45th president’s son.There are also slots for Senate Republicans including Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Cynthia Lummis and Rick Scott, and House Republicans such as Kevin McCarthy, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, all of whom voted to challenge Joe Biden’s victory. The “big lie” of a stolen election is expected to thrive at CPAC.That is not least because the conference will culminate on Sunday with Trump himself. In his first post-presidential speech, he is expected to promise to back Maga candidates in next year’s midterm elections, condemn Biden’s reversal of his immigration policies and reserve particular venom for his foes within the Republican party.Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which hosts CPAC, told the Reuters news agency: “Donald Trump is going to stay in the game and will be involved in primaries and he’s going to opine and he’s going to give speeches, and for establishment Republicans it puts shivers down their spine. They’re very concerned he’s going to continue to have an impact. My advice to them is to get used to it.”Among the talking points will be a straw poll of attendees on their preferences for the Republican nomination in 2024. Given the section of the party that now rules CPAC, there is little doubt that Trump will emerge the winner.Tim Miller, former political director of Republican Voters Against Trump, said: “He’s gonna speak right after the 2024 straw poll, which presumably will show him with a landslide victory, and so I think it’s set up for him speak in a way that will signal that he sees himself as the leader of the party, as the frontrunner for 2024. He will attack those who have questioned him in that regard.“I’m sure he’ll be received overwhelmingly positively by the crowd in those appeals. The Republicans are doing this to themselves. They had an opportunity to put a stake in his heart [at this month’s impeachment trial]; they didn’t take it and he’s in charge of the party right now. He has the support of a plurality, if not a majority of the voters within the party. There is no real organized wing for challenging him.”Just as revealing as who is at CPAC is who is not.The former vice-president Mike Pence, apparently abandoned by Trump on 6 January even as a violent mob closed in at the US Capitol, declined an invitation. Nikki Haley, an ex-ambassador to the UN who was sharply critical of the president’s role in the insurrection but then reportedly tried and failed to heal the rift, will also not be present.Another absentee will be Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who voted to acquit Trump on a technicality at the impeachment trial but then eviscerated him for inciting the deadly riot. If McConnell’s intention was to the light the party’s path to a post-Trump future, however, few analysts believe he will succeed.Miller, writer-at-large at the Bulwark website and former communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 campaign, commented: “In the actual battlefield of the campaigns, there’s no McConnell wing, there are no candidates saying that Trump shouldn’t have advanced the big lie. There are going to be no candidates for Senate besides Lisa Murkowski [of Alaska] saying that we should move on from Donald Trump and that he’s complicit in the coup and there’s a shameful moment in our history. The Republican candidates are all for Trump.”Republicans who voted to impeach or convict Trump have been censured and vilified by their home state parties. Solomon, the Trump merchandise seller, attended a recent rally in Wyoming that called on the local congresswoman Liz Cheney to resign.He said: “McConnell just got re-elected. If McConnell was up in 22, there’s no way he would have said what he said because there’s no way he would win. Right now in Kentucky, a cat would win a primary against McConnell.”Right now in Kentucky, a cat would win a primary against McConnellA CNN poll last month found that three in four Republicans believe that Biden did not legitimately win the presidential election, even though state officials and courts found no significant evidence to back Trump’s claims of voter fraud. The conspiracy theorists are expected to be out in force at CPAC.Tamara Leigh, a past CPAC attendee who protested in Washington on 6 January but was a was a block or two away from the US Capitol when it was stormed, said she feels “100%” certain that the election was stolen. She cited conversations with Patrick Byrne, a former Overstock.com chief executive, and a film produced by Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow (both men’s claims have been widely debunked).Leigh, who is in her 50s and works in communications, added: “If Trump runs in 2024, I absolutely would support him and I think his base will follow. His base is the Republican party. The 78 million Trump voters [the true figure was 74 million] are still standing with our president and I believe the majority are resolved to continue to fight even harder. The support will be with him, not with the GOP.”Last year’s CPAC at the National Harbor in Maryland had the slogan “America vs socialism”, a message that fell flat against the moderate Democrat Biden. The event suffered a scare when it emerged that an attendee had been infected with the coronavirus.This year’s organizers are insisting that masks be worn, although many of the speakers were notably reluctant to do so for months. Brandon Morris, a nurse in Orlando who attended CPAC two years ago, said: “This is Florida. I don’t know if you saw the Super Bowl? When I was in New York, everyone wore masks but in Florida, it’s just a cultural difference. Some people will wear masks, some people probably won’t wear masks.”This year’s theme is “America Uncanceled”, a reference to the current conservative sport of accusing liberals of applying “cancel culture” to those whose views they do not share. But it is a slogan that the Maga crowd might themselves apply to McConnell, Cheney and other dissidents who will be nowhere near Orlando.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “What there’s going to be over the next year or so is a question as to how people who would prefer President Trump not be the leading voice for the Republican party position themselves. There’ll be many different views on that and many different attempts.“Clearly McConnell is somebody who will defend all sitting senators and who’s made his views about Trump’s action on January 6 clear. But McConnell is not somebody who plays from out front. He likes to play from behind, so I will not expect it to be a McConnell versus Trump show. It may be to Trump’s advantage to try and make it that but it’s not in McConnell’s interest to accept the bait.” More